


On the Creation of Routine

by Ghelik



Series: Life after the Mountain [9]
Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Character Study, Cooking, F/M, Fluff, Murphy-centric, Post-Mount Weather, Post-Season/Series 02, unbetad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-25
Updated: 2016-06-25
Packaged: 2018-07-18 04:40:34
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,445
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7299976
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ghelik/pseuds/Ghelik
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A few things are true:<br/>1) Murphy likes routines, routines are safe<br/>2) On the ground food doesn't need to be only about survival. Food can be fun.<br/>3) He's surrounded by pushy people with no respect for personal space or any sort of boundaries.</p>
            </blockquote>





	On the Creation of Routine

It started one evening when they got invited over to Bellamy’s table with the rest of the gang for dinner. It was weird and unexpected, but they went and sat with them anyway. After a few nights of being called over to sit with the group they just sort of wandered over to check if there were two chairs left for them. Curiously there always were. Bryan even stood up once to get one for them that one time when Monroe brought Adam with her.  
Slowly they were also included into the conversation. Around them people made jokes and bumped their shoulders and patted their backs and pinched food from their trays. It was strange to be so openly expected.  
Emori just rolled with it, like she usually did with everything, but Murphy was wary. It was disconcerting to be surrounded by so many people who seemed to genuinely want to be with them, who didn’t expect anything in return.  
The strangeness of this situation would spring on him sometimes. Emori and him were used to a deal less social interaction and liked their lack of social interaction. People were difficult and strange and sometimes it was exhausting to be forced to sit with such a large group of people. That’s when they decided to stay in once a week. They had a secret stash of dried meat and fruit anyway, and a few pans they had traded for. Those days Murphy would do the cooking in their “back-yard-kitchen” since Emori couldn’t cook to safe her life – her cooking skills were even worse than those of the canteen staff.  
It turns repetitive after a few weeks, predictable, even. He likes predictable; predictable is _safe_.  
And then their friends just invited themselves over, because these people have no concept of personal space.  
Just like that, their little back-yard-kitchen is suddenly full of people. And he likes most of these people, enjoys their strange company and it’s fun sharing his food and being complimented on it. It feels different, eating at home or going to the canteen, even if usually it’s the same people coming over o sitting in the canteen.

That’s how their routine began: Emori and Murphy would eat in the square or in the stuffy long-house everyday except for Wednesdays and Saturdays. On Wednesdays everyone would invite themselves over, ignore his sarcastic grumbling and bring random ingredients for him to stash for future use. Saturdays were ‘lazy days’ in which he didn’t have to go out with the gathering group and Emori didn’t have to go to Ravens workshop. They were left alone to do whatever they wanted.  
Lazy days were the best.

On the fifth week into their routine he discovered he didn’t resent them for coming over. He expected them to show up and he would actually worry when they arrived later than usual – which Emori found endearingly hilarious.

At some point Lincoln decided to bring him a cooking-book salvaged from who-knows-where. That’s when things started to be really fun.

In the Ark food had been all about getting nutrients and vitamins and staying alive, just as everything else. Food was a necessity, done in the most efficient and controlled way possible, which usually meant you only got nutrient packs, which tasted a little bit like melted aluminium and – for some obscure reason –rosins.  
Arkers seem to be hardwired for boring stuff and even on the ground with the whole load of spices and food and possibility of using open fire available, the food is still something they do very badly. What they get in the canteen is usually overcooked and under-spiced, tastes like gasoline and a little bit like firewood – because nobody has a clue of what they’re doing.  
The menu is also always the same: half decent mashed vegetables, slightly charred meat that –even though it’s fresh manages to turn into an unswallowable ball and some sort of porridge that has to be pushed down your throad with a spoon and feels like lead in your stomach.  
Food – it turns out – doesn’t have to be like that.  
Thanks to Lincoln’s book – and a lot of other books he’s managed to hoard and then leanr by heart just in case he looses them – Murphy discovers that food can actually be fun. It can be difficult to make and it can be original. One can actually invent new things. There are spices to go along with vegetables that make their taste explode on your tongue, there are spices and plants that make your mouth burn and there are bitter fruits and sweet fruits and you can combine them and find new things. He’s learned six hundred different ways of cooking eggs and he’s starting to resent his lack of an ‘oven’ – whatever that is – because he really wants to try his hand at backing cakes.  
Food is fun because there can be some pretty amazing mistakes, too: like that one time he tried a plant that was definitively not meant for eating and they ended up rushing to the latrines at all times for two days. (He was sure Emori and him would be kicked out of Droptwo after that, but they never were and he’s still waiting for the retaliation). The strange thing about that incident is it isn’t even the only time his cooking-experiments go a little bit south, but the hundred never beat him up for it, never break their routine and their teasing is – if annoying and disconcerting – never really mean.  
On the other hand Murphy can comfortably say the first time he manages to make pasta – from scratch, thank you very much – it’s the most amazing thing they’ve ever eaten.

Murphy has decided he’ll figure out how to make cheese one of these days. The arkadians have traded with the grounders and are now the proud owners of six goats, which Murphy hates, but he’s willing to face the milking of one of them for enough milk to make cheese. There are a load of cool things he can do with cheese – among others improve the lasanga he’s made without oven or cheese.  
He’s contemplating how stupid arkadians are anyway because he’s supposed to be the asshole here so, why’s the only one trying to improve their diet? Shouldn’t the Doc be doing it too? Isn’t food somehow to better health? When suddenly he hears Miller saying:  
\- You should totally come to the mid-summer-festival at the grounder village.  
Miller’s sitting cross-legged on the other side of the fire, polishing off the rest of his dish of lasagna. He’s been talking about the mid-summer-festival for a few weeks now. Murphy knows what he’s expected to say:  
\- Nah. I don’t think so.  
And doesn’t really understand why Miller’s face falls. It’s not like…  
\- They’re cool- adds Miller with a small forced smile- I promise nothing bad will happen.  
He just smiles wryly, because he doesn’t know what he has to say to that.  
The strange thing is next night it’s Octavia who brings the festival up, clearly implying he and Emori should go too. Then Monty and the day after that Raven and Jasper gang up on Emori – even though Raven can’t go because of her leg doesn’t allow her to run around the forest after curfew.  
Emori and Murphy agree to get them off their backs, neither really believing that they’re really expected to go and highly doubting that they’d have a good time anyway.  
But, just like that comes the night of the festival and Octavia comes to fetch them from their tent. And just like that they’re included in the group sneaking out of Droptwo after the Ark-established-curfew-that-everyone-in-Droptwo-sort-of-ignores-anyway and running through the forest to the grounder village sitting on their western border.

There’s music fire and food: roasted boar, cakes – as soon as he tastes them he’s dying to get his hands on the recipe – sweet alcohol that tastes like berries – and is a thousand times better than Monty’s moonshine. He’s wary of the grounders and doesn’t mingle all that much, sticking to the shadows and the sky people and is left alone which is fine by him.  
But the berry-wine warms him from the inside out and the fire is taller than him, illuminating the night, jumping and crackling; the music is rhythmic and seems to shake his bones. He watches Emori – flushed and tipsy – dancing between Harper and Monroe; half listens to Miller and a big mean-looking grounder exchanging stories.  
At some point he discovers he’s having fun – not that he’ll tell Miller or any of the hundred that, but it’s fun to be dragged next to the fire and dancing with his…friends

**Author's Note:**

> As always, this is unbetad.  
> Some fluff before shit hit's the fan, because I discovered there's actually a plot going on in this series  
> Thanks for reading.


End file.
